Video – Matthew Brunwasser Journalisthttp://matthewbrunwasser.com
Print, Video, Radio JournalismSun, 06 Jan 2019 04:12:02 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3Soap Opera Touristshttp://matthewbrunwasser.com/index.php/2009/10/soap-opera-tourists/
Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:00:54 +0000http://matthewbrunwasser.com/?p=290A wave of Arab tourism is washing over Istanbul – and it’s all because of racy Turkish soap operas. Last season Noor, the most popular, was watched by 85 million people across the Arab world. Monocle sets off to the Bosphorous to join the guided tour for avid viewers wishing to live the dream.

]]>Gunrunnershttp://matthewbrunwasser.com/index.php/2002/05/gunrunners/
Thu, 23 May 2002 23:14:38 +0000http://matthewbrunwasser.com/?p=84broadcast on PBS: Frontline/World
Winner of the Columbia Online Journalism Award for General Excellence, and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for Online Journalism

Gallery of International Arms Dealers

LEONID EFIMOVICH MININFrom Ukraine, a New Kind of Arms Trafficker

The scene in Leonid Minin’s hotel room on the night of August 4, 2000 could have been taken from a Quentin Tarrantino film: Minin, a pale Ukrainian, abundantly fleshy and naked, freebasing cocaine, flanked by a quartet of Russian, Albanian, Italian and Kenyan prostitutes. A pornographic film flickers in the background. Minin, the majority owner of the Europa Hotel in Cinisello Balsamo, a small town outside Milan, Italy, has transformed his two-room suite into a bedroom/office and den of debauchery.CONTINUE READING…

MONZER AL KASSARThe Prince of Marbella: Arms To All Sides

This case study details the expert machinations of Monzer Al Kassar in breaking the U.N. arms embargo on Yugoslavia. Distancing himself from his activities through intermediaries, he appears fully confident of avoiding any legal liability.

The case illustrates how Al Kassar and his associates tried to obscure the money trail of an illegal arms sale through various bank transfers, and it clearly establishes Al Kassar’s role as the broker arranging the sale of Polish arms to Croatia and Bosnia during the wartime arms embargo on Yugoslavia. The information presented here is drawn from the report of a Swiss judicial investigation into Al Kassar’s financial activities.CONTINUE READING…

Victor Bout is the poster boy for a new generation of post Cold War international arms dealers who play a critical role in areas where the weapons trade has been embargoed by the United Nations.

Now, as FRONTLINE/World reports in “Gunrunners,” unprecedented U.N. investigations have begun to unravel the mystery of these broken embargoes, many of them imposed on African countries involved in bloody civil wars. At the heart of this unfolding detective story is the identification of a group of East European arms merchants, with Victor Bout the first of them to be publicly and prominently identified. The U.N. investigative team pursued leads that a Mr. Bout [pronounced “butt” in Russian] was pouring small arms and ammunition into Angola, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the Congo, making possible massacres on a scale that stunned the world.CONTINUE READING…

Increasing hope and inevitable disappointment shape the course of three 20th century Bulgarian political upheavals. The story is told by representatives of two generations, inhabiting the visual space around the Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum, a monument to Bulgaria’s first communist dictator. Despite three failed attempts by Bulgaria’s anti-Communist rulers to blast the mausoleum into history, the Mausoleum remains standing. The oblique and macabre symbol provokes the viewer to question his or her assumptions about themes commonly taken for granted: freedom and responsibility, democracy, hope and disappointment.